374 ox TIIK FOSSIL BONES OF PACHYDERMATOUS QUADUUPEDS. 



have been founded on some similar confusion of names. Mr. Marsden 

 has since informed us, in his third edition, that he did not advance this 

 fact upon his own individual observation, but from a drawing «Df M. 

 AVhalfeldt, an officer employed in survejdng the coast, who had met 

 with that animal near the mouth of one of the southern rivers of the 

 island, and had sent a sketch of it to the government. Mr. Marsden 

 proceeds further to point out that the Society of Batavia, in its fii'st 

 volume of 1799, counts the hippopotamus among tlie animals of Java, 

 and gives it the same Malay name, conda-ayer or kiida-ayer, which it 

 bears at Sumatra*. 



But does this hippopotamus of the islands of Sunda resemble that 

 of Africa in every particular? This would be a very remarkable 

 phenomenon, and would be far from corresponding with our ideas of 

 the geographical distribution of the great species. 



Perhaps this hippojDotamus of M. Whalfeldt and of the Society of Ba- 

 tavia, and the succotyro of Java, represented by NiewhofF t. are nothing 

 more than one and the same animal a little disfigured by one of these 

 authors, and miscalled by the others. However this may be, the cleariog 

 up of this point is the most interesting task that can fall to the lot of 

 those naturalists who shall have the opportunity of visiting those re- 

 mote regions. 



I pressed my pupil, M. Diard, and my son-in-law, M. Duvaucel, to 

 take up this subject ; but although these two young naturalists tra- 

 versed dijSferent parts of the islands of Java and Sumatra ; and although 

 they took rhinoceroses of two species, one entirely new, and discovered 

 a new species of tapir, they did not meet with the succotyro or the 

 hijjpopotamus. 



Hitherto I have confined myself to works relating to the exterior of 

 the hippopotamus. Its anatomical construction was very imperfectly 

 known before my time. 



Nehemias Grew was the first to publish a figure of the osteology of 

 the head accompanied by some remaiks, in his Museum Regalis Socie- 

 tatis, printed in 1681. 



Antoine de Jussieu gave some more perfect figures of the same part, 

 with a more detailed description, in the Memoirs of the Academy for 

 1724. To this he added some details on the teeth, and on the osteo- 

 logy of the toes of the fore feet. 



In 1764, Daubenton, in the eleventh volume of liis Natural History, 

 published a figure, and a still better description of the head : the oste- 

 ology of the toes of the fore and hind feet, and that of the second order 

 of the carpus, all taken from adult subjects ; and, having occasion in 

 1712 to trace the origin of some fossil bones, particularly of a fe- 

 mur of an animal from Ohio, he took away the femur of the foetus 

 of an hippopotamus which was in the Museum, and described and en- 

 graved it in order to show that the femur of the fossil animal bore no 

 resemblance to it. 



Nevertheless these three authors neglected to examine these teeth 



* History of Sumatra, tiiird edition, pp. 116 and 117. 



+ Niewboff's figure has been copied into the quadrupeds of Scbreber, in the general 

 zoology of Shaw and others. It represents an animal very similar to the hippopo- 

 tamus with a shaggy tail, and tusks projecting beneath the eyes. The author tells 

 us its figure resembles that of the ox, and that it i^ '•nrely caught. 



